NEW DELHI: Railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has decided to tap into the UPA's flagship employment scheme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for some of the regular maintenance work requiring unskilled labour.

Bansal recently wrote to the rural development minister suggesting that works like construction and maintenance of embankments, developing waterways, constructing pathways, clearing vegetation growth, afforestation, construction of approach road for railway crossing be taken up under NREGA.

The railway minister was of the view that the deployment of rural population in NREGA similar to the work required by the railways, especially since some of this work is undertaken in remote areas.

Making a case for inclusion of railways related work in the NREGA schedule of works, Bansal in a letter to rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said: "This arrangement would not only open up more options for gainful employment for the rural population but also greatly help Indian Railways expedite its ongoing projects and fulfill the need of regular maintenance of tracks and development of adjoining railway land."

The rural development ministry has identified a list of works-developing waterways and trenches, construction of pathways, afforestation and construction of kuccha approach roads-that can be taken up in the first instance. The works under the rural employment programme are planned by the gram sabhas and most of these are implemented by the gram panchayats.

Therefore, Ramesh has suggested that the railways identify the "suitable works" in the four categories and submit them to district programme co-ordinators so that it can be passed on to the gram panchayats and the gram sabhas can include these works in the annual labour budgets.

"The engineers of the Railways could later assist the Gram Panchayats in developing estimates and training workers and also ensure the quality of work," Ramesh said in his reply to the railways minister's proposal.

Ramesh has also suggested that the Railway Minister mention this effort at synergising the rural employment programme and the needs of the railways in his Budget speech.

The rural employment programme, which was the Congress' big ticket social welfare measure in UPA I has been under criticism for not building assets and that works undertaken as part of the programme were not adding value.

Ramesh has been critical of the "ditching digging" approach of the programme and sought to bring in works that lead to permanent asset building as part of the NREGA portfolio.